IRISH ISSN 0790-7672 October 2004 The Sinn Fein Story POLITICAL Irish Times History & Share-Structure Labour Comment Volume 19 No 10 REVIEW Lessons To Learn (back page) Incorporating Volume 18 Number 10 The Northern Star Workers' Weekly ISSN 0954-5891 Contents: See Page Two Northern Ireland Captain Kelly: . Fissured Politics Posthumous Revenge The pseudo-democracy of Northern Ireland has now reached a clear position of What is it about Captain Kelly that stalemate. All that is new is that the stalemate is out in the open. The moves have all been arouses such vindictiveness? He is beset gone through and there is nothing more that spin-doctoring can do to camouflage the by enemies on three sides: revisionist, situation. Lynchite and a number of Official IRA hold-outs. (It should be said that not all Northern Ireland is not, and never has been, a state. It was never anything more than the erstwhile Officials go along with a delegated apparatus of the British state designed to keep the Six Counties at arm’s denigrating Jim Kelly, and some have length from British democracy and to give Britain leverage on 26 County affairs. acted quite honourably towards the Captain in the past, including Cathal Because it is not a state, the democratic principle of majority rule cannot work in it. Goulding.) Even after death, the assaults If it was a state it would have given rise to a form of politics appropriate to its functioning go on. Indeed, they are pursued with as a state. But the state in Northern Ireland has always been the British state—not only greater vigour than ever, now that he can in ultimate sovereignty but in a wide range of the institutions within which everyday life no longer vindicate his good name in the is lived. courts. The latest, and perhaps most crudely Politics do not relate to the actual state. Elections in Northern Ireland have never been vicious of all, attack happened on the contested by parties seeking a mandate to govern the state. The shifts and accommodations afternoon of 16th July. It took place and compromises and de facto changes of individual position, which happen as a matter virtually to the minute on the first anniver- of course in the political framework of a state, have never happened there. Elections, sary of his death. The location was Derry. therefore, do not give rise to politically functional majorities. A large assembly of 70 people had gathered to launch an organisation which The majority is not a political majority. Policies for government have little or nothing would campaign and petition to clear to do with it. It has therefore no moral standing with the minority. Captain Kelly’s name. His wife, Sheila, continued on page 2 and two of his children were present. The event was attended by an array of well- wishers, including Neil Blaney’s nephew, Niall, John Kelly, Dr. and Mrs. MacLean, Paddy ‘Derry’ Doherty, and Fr. Des Wilson. The meeting was chaired by Fionnbarra Ó Dochartaigh, who himself as a republican had been involved in the Civil Rights movement. Ó Dochartaigh had been instrumental in inviting a group who attended the campaign launch with destructive intent: a group of former Official IRA people who sat together and viewed the proceed- ings with sinister and cold faces. They had come to blacken Captain Kelly’s name. continued on page 6 Agreement in its essentials, that fact would C O N T E N T S be taken into account when an alternative Page system was devised. Fissured Politics. Editorial 1 That was the threat which caused David Captain Kelly. Posthumous Revenge. Angela Clifford 1 Trimble to sign the Agreement on Good Friday 1998. The alternative was under- The Sinn Fein Story. Julianne Herlihy 3 stood to be an enhancement of the minimal An Cor Tuathail: The Contest Of Oisín And Patrick. Part 3 9 joint sovereignty arrangements of the (Compiled by Pat Muldowney) Hillsborough Agreement of 1985. He The NIT Page (Not In The Irish Times: Manus O'Riordan; Timothy Lane) 10 thereupon decided to sign the Agreement but shred it by opposition from within. Irish Times History. John Martin 11 The Hillsborough Anglo-Irish governing The Irish Times Share Structure After 1974. John Martin 12 structures were dismantled under the Agreement. Housing Policy In Northern Ireland. Seán McGouran 14 The threat does not appear to be Farenheit 9/11. John Martin 15 working on Paisley. JFK Rides Again. Seán McGouran 16 The SDLP was a ghostly presence at Leeds Castle. In the subsequent bickering Labour Comment, edited by Pat Maloney: the DUP suggested that it too should give Lessons To Learn by John Ryan up something in the interest of The 'Partnership' Age Continues compromising, if the IRA gave up its weapons. But the SDLP has nothing to give up short of treason. Its decline was due to the fact that it gave up so much to Trimble while getting nothing in return. There has been a change in the relative rejected the Agreement but took the two Durkan responded: “The IRA should strengths of majority and minority during Ministers to which it was entitled under it, never have had arms in the first place”. the past 80 years. The ratio began at a declaring that this did not imply acceptance And there are a great many other things potential 70:30—but the differential was of the Agreement. While refusing to that should never have happened, including usually much wider in practice due to recognise the Court, it took a seat on the Eve eating the apple. But politics is an demoralisation on the minority side. It is Bench. activity conducted within the Fall, and its now a steady 60:40, or something less. Last year it defeated the Ulster Unionist object is not a return to Eden. But the change did not reflect a political Party in the Unionist election on an anti- We never gave any semblance of ‘swing’. It was entirely the product of Agreement mandate. The UUP is also support to the IRA campaign. At a number what is politely called “demographics”. anti-Agreement. The difference is that of critical junctures the SDLP gave it very the UUP sought to subvert the Agreement substantial support. But we have held for The 1998 Agreement took account of from within while the DUP rejected it 30 years that the perverse mode of the fact that Northern Ireland is only a outright. government in Northern Ireland was pretend-democracy in which actual sufficient reason for the re-emergence of democratic politics play no part. It made Sinn Fein won the Nationalist election. the IRA—in fact the construction of a new detailed arrangements for a subordinate The Social Democratic and Labour Party IRA out of Northern Ireland conditions. administration in which Ministries were was held to have been gullible in its conduct shared out proportionate to the voting of affairs since 1998. Durkan’s remark is a mere debating strength of parties, and operated independ- The DUP, being the major party, will point. If it was the position of the SDLP ently of each other, being responsible not accept that majority rule does not in earnest, it would have agreed to forming neither to a Cabinet—there being no apply in Northern Ireland. it now refuses an ‘anti-terrorist’ Coalition with the Cabinet—nor to a Parliament. Ministers to operate the system under which it held Unionists. But it knew very well that its were chosen by party leaders from two ministries for four years. electoral support would collapse if it did members who were elected to a kind of such a thing. High-powered talks were held between Parliament, called an Assembly, and The gullibility of the SDLP was one operated independently thereafter. The the British Government and the DUP at Leeds Castle in mid-September (and also factor in causing the Agreement to be a Party could change its Ministers without dead letter almost from the start. Another reference to the Assembly and the DUP between Sinn Fein and the Government, but not between the DUP and Sinn Fein, was the aggressively anti-Sinn Fein did so. Elections to the Assembly were posture of Dublin Governments. A third political contests only within each of the and the other parties were also present in the vicinity). A BBC radio report, was the fact that the appearance of Unionist two communities who were explicitly support for the Agreement was brought obviously based on a Government briefing, recognised as the component parts of about by confidence trickery and there Northern Ireland. said that Sinn Fein had met Government was bound to be a reaction. requirements in the matter of arms’ The Agreement gave formal structural decommissioning, and the obstacle was John Bruton has now put himself at the expression to the social reality of Northern the DUP refusal to operate the old head of a movement to re-Anglicise Ireland. He became Taoiseach unexpect- Ireland, and thereby entrenched that Ministerial system, and suggested that, if edly, at a time when his political career reality. The Democratic Unionist Party the DUP made it impossible to restore the 2 appeared to be over. He had the sense to Review; Hope And History, Making Peace In Ireland by Gerry Adams. know that, unlike De Valera, he needed to Brandon Press. Dingle, Co. Kerry. 2003. do more than look into his heart to know what to say. The Republic was not yet ready for a Unionist Taoiseach. He therefore requested Martin Mansergh, who had been assistant to previous Taoiseachs The Sinn Fein Story on Northern policy, and had been one of the organisers of the confidence trick, to “To me, in Co.